Investing $30 Billion, the UAE Announces the World's Largest Climate-Focused Investment Fund (reuters.com) 62
Tuesday the New York Times reported that while hosting the global climate summit, the United Arab Emirates also hoped to lobby for oil and gas deals around the world.
But Friday the United Arab Emirates announced that they'd also started a $30 billion climate fund, reports Reuters, and that fund "aims to attract $250 billion of investment by the end of the decade."
The New York Times notes the fund started just months ago, and "at least 20 percent of the funds, would be earmarked for projects in the developing world, where it is especially difficult to finance clean energy projects because interest rates are high and lenders shy away from what they perceive as risky investments."
The Washington Post notes that "It immediately becomes one of the world's largest climate-focused investment funds." "This is a big deal," said Mona Dajani, global head of renewables, energy and infrastructure at the law firm Shearman and Sterling. "We have seen other programs previously, but not at this level. They were too scattered, too small, not aligned to the broader financial sector."
The lack of cash feeds into other challenges that can make it impossible to scale up clean energy in some countries. Without a steady pipeline of projects, there are no established supply chains, and nations find themselves locked out of markets for key components that are in high demand elsewhere, such as solar cells and critical minerals used to make giant batteries that store renewable power. The Global South will need an immense amount of such battery storage by the end of the decade, according to the Rockefeller Foundation, enough to store about as much power as is produced by 90 large nuclear plants. The storage is used to bottle wind and solar power and distribute it back into grids after dark and when the wind dies down.
The Post also reports that "the money to fund the projects will come largely from oil revenue." While the UAE framed its initiative as a call to global action, it is at least partly geared toward generating returns. It is one of several forays the UAE is making into clean-energy finance as it seeks to diversify its economy amid predictions the demand for oil will slump in coming years... The new initiative puts a spotlight on the UAE's evolving role in the fight against climate change. The country is at once one of the world's biggest contributors to warming, pumping massive amounts of oil into the global economy, while also using its fossil fuel wealth to put itself on the vanguard of energy innovation.
But Friday the United Arab Emirates announced that they'd also started a $30 billion climate fund, reports Reuters, and that fund "aims to attract $250 billion of investment by the end of the decade."
The New York Times notes the fund started just months ago, and "at least 20 percent of the funds, would be earmarked for projects in the developing world, where it is especially difficult to finance clean energy projects because interest rates are high and lenders shy away from what they perceive as risky investments."
The Washington Post notes that "It immediately becomes one of the world's largest climate-focused investment funds." "This is a big deal," said Mona Dajani, global head of renewables, energy and infrastructure at the law firm Shearman and Sterling. "We have seen other programs previously, but not at this level. They were too scattered, too small, not aligned to the broader financial sector."
The lack of cash feeds into other challenges that can make it impossible to scale up clean energy in some countries. Without a steady pipeline of projects, there are no established supply chains, and nations find themselves locked out of markets for key components that are in high demand elsewhere, such as solar cells and critical minerals used to make giant batteries that store renewable power. The Global South will need an immense amount of such battery storage by the end of the decade, according to the Rockefeller Foundation, enough to store about as much power as is produced by 90 large nuclear plants. The storage is used to bottle wind and solar power and distribute it back into grids after dark and when the wind dies down.
The Post also reports that "the money to fund the projects will come largely from oil revenue." While the UAE framed its initiative as a call to global action, it is at least partly geared toward generating returns. It is one of several forays the UAE is making into clean-energy finance as it seeks to diversify its economy amid predictions the demand for oil will slump in coming years... The new initiative puts a spotlight on the UAE's evolving role in the fight against climate change. The country is at once one of the world's biggest contributors to warming, pumping massive amounts of oil into the global economy, while also using its fossil fuel wealth to put itself on the vanguard of energy innovation.
UEA is also impacted by climate change... (Score:4, Interesting)
most of Abu Zhabi city lies around 5m over the sea level...
sea rise is accelerating and in 200 years it will be whole underwater...
plus temperatures at UAE are not cool either...
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Yup. So at current rate of sea level rise, even without the sediment just naturally elevating land levels along with it, as we saw happen in "nations that were supposed to be underwater by 2020", they're going to start feeling it in....
Many centuries?
Considering how modern city building works, everything there will be rebuilt several times over to the new standards and locations at that point.
In reality, this fund is about economics. UAE is a petrostate. They need to hedge against oil demand potentially dro
Re:UEA is also impacted by climate change... (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of it as betting half on red and half on black in roulette. You're almost certain to keep at least half.
0 and 00 would like to have a word with you.
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Read the thing you quoted carefully. Specifically the two qualifier words in the second sentence.
Re:UEA is also impacted by climate change... (Score:4, Insightful)
When someone refers to "sea level" without any qualifiers, it's understood to be *mean* sea level. It doesn't count tides, waves, or storm surge. So whether 5m above just-plain-unqualified sea level is safe depends on where you are and when you are talking about. For example if you're 5m above MSL in the Bay of Fundy, you're already in the intertidal zone [youtube.com] because Fundy has 14.5 m tides.
But let's say you're 5m above "sea level" in a more normal place, like Mobile. Mobile has roughly a .5m tidal amplitude, which means a typical high tide is 0.25m above MSL and 4.75m below your land. Throw in a very big storm, like Hurricane Frederick with its 4.5 m storm surge and if it hits at high tide you've still got 0.25m (10 inches) of safety margin. But add the optimistic 30cm of sea level rise by 2100 and you lose the battle with Frederick by literally two inches. Assume the middle-of-the-road projection of 1m sea level and you lose by 29 inches in Frederick sized storm, and you're also getting flooded in less extreme outliers. Assume the pessimistic 2m of sea level rise and you're getting flooded during normal storms. So to people with assets just 5m over MSL, it *can* make a lot of difference whether we end up in the optimistic, middle-of-the-road, or pessimistic sea level rise scenarios. It could in many places spell the difference between being looded once in a century, once in a decade, and every year.
All around the world, people have built their structures according to out-of-date flood maps. Sea level rise doesn't mean they're under water every day, but if they had expected to be under water once every fifty years, they may find themselves under water every twenty years they may find themselvs under water every two. That may be the difference between the property being useful to its owners and not.
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"Mean level" doesn't exist, because it depends on gravitational pull at location. Which varies across the planet. For example, there's a massive "lump" middle of Indian Ocean where water is noticeably lower, observable from space. This is why "global sea level" often referred as "mean sea level" is utterly irrelevant. What matters is how high sea is at each coastal location.
As we have observed in recent decades, the "sea level is rising, we're all going to be underwater soon!" narrative is objectively and u
Re: UEA is also impacted by climate change... (Score:2)
Anyone with more than one brain cell, a normal level of empathy for their fellow human beings, and a goal of not being an insufferable, childish, selfish prick?
So...a portion of the population at best, sadly. You can always tell who doesn't fall into that group by the childish insults and ridicule thrown into any discussion of human rights or the environment. Republicans in general come to mind, given their love of all things crass, immature, and able to be weaponized to "own the libs". That and their disda
Forget climate change (Score:1)
Shameless greenwashing fraud. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shameless greenwashing fraud. (Score:4, Informative)
"the money to fund the projects will come largely from oil revenue."
They are going to cause the pollution and use the profits to fund the solution. Circular economy, lol.
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That makes sense to me.
Think of how materials for making the first automobiles got to the factories, probably by horses. The steel and wood needed to make the first steam ships were likely brought to port by sail. Early diesel locomotives would be towed to where they'd get final construction by steam locomotives.
An interesting thing about the move from steam locomotives to diesel was that this transition happened so quickly that there were cases of a new steam locomotive being considered obsolete before i
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Coal power in the US constitutes only about 20% of electricity and rapidly dropping, yet quite a large amount of solar panels are manufactured here.
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It's not just the electricity used to make silicon that drives the burning of coal. Silicon is often refined by using coal as the reducing agent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
To get solar PV to where it means we aren't turning coal into CO2 any more requires we find another process for silicon refining. Maybe hydrogen could be used, that's been proposed as a replacement for coal in making iron and steel. What I've seen as the most promising for hydrogen production are processes that use heat and elect
Re:Shameless greenwashing fraud. (Score:4, Interesting)
While true, there's the other side of the coin. UAE being a petrostate(s) needs to hedge for distant future. One way to do it is to create a fund that will invest in all potential replacements. That way, if renewables/global warming as an ideology falls through and humanity takes a more China/India style approach to the future, they win by continuing being hydrocarbon producers. If it takes more of an EU approach of improvershing their citizenry to reduce hydrocarbon consumption, they get to earn returns from investing in the thing that keeps societies running (however poorly) and earning money from that.
I.e. it could be a 50/50 bet from an entity willing to lose half to keep half.
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Physics called. It wants you to stop slandering it as something that bends to PR.
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https://www.tesla.com/ns_video... [tesla.com]
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I'm that asshole that actually reads the suggested source, unlike assholes like you, who post shit without actually reading the contents, thinking that because search engine returned it as a source for their query on a subject, it will support that query.
Well, I have bad news for you. It doesn't. The entire document is based on, and I quote directly from it:
"Tesla internal estimate", "yet to be demonstrated at large scale", "assumes efficiency curve as project scale increases".
In summary: it's a wishlist ba
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And you still failed.
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So in your brilliant estimation, taking numbers that they admit to be nothing more than wishful thinking, and applying caveats that they're wishful thinking... transforms those numbers into factual ones?
There are high schoolers being taught right now about the basics of error estimation in physics that would like you beat you on the head with how basic science works. Your idiotic slander of every physicist that has lived in last two centuries or so is beyond idiotic.
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And what does Captain Short Bus here do with the information? You object tha
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Factually, they have not done such a thing. The only reason you think according to you, is that you believe that if you take garbage data, and admit it's garbage data, it magically makes it good data.
I've no idea why you then decided to also add a lot of credentialism to the tail end of this idiotic argument. The fact is that the people who's credentials you're so desperate to steal in your last post clearly state the things I note above about data.
Likely because unlike you, they have in fact passed high sc
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From the executive summary of the document:
They declare it positively, and their list of sources is two pages long and replete with .gov domain names, including the US Department of Energy and National Laboratories. But I guess tha
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You forgot "Nazi", "Jew", "Trump supporter", "Russian agent", "evil capitalist", "oil baron" and my personal favorite, "troll".
In reality, I'm merely literate and actually check the sources offered when they are offered, and search for sources when they're not. You're so phenomenally stupid that you literally quoted a paper without reading it, and now you're quoting "conclusions" based on what paper itself admits to be garbage data.
Because you are so phenomenally stupid, that you don't understand that you c
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You: "Fake news! Fake news!"
This will happen, and when it does, you'll make up some conspiracy theory about it. Just shove it up your ass already and stay on Qanon, or 4chan, or whatever other toilet spawned you.
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Idiot: "Half-trillion-dollar company full of elite scientists and engineers: "Renewable energy economy is feasible and cheaper than fossil fuels."
Actual claim: "If a lot of wishful thinking and these bad numbers we openly state are bad are true, then half-trillion-dollar company full of elite scientists and engineers: "Renewable energy economy is feasible and cheaper than fossil fuels."
It's not fake news. You're just too stupid to comprehend the context. You're that idiot who's pointing at the sunset and sc
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Renewables have already been proven to be economically superior to fossil fuels in every way.
Must be why Germany has such low electricity prices LOL.
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Unless eternal life is discovered, no one alive will. According to more recent IPCC numbers, temperate zones will never feel it (was hilarious to hear exasperated Bill Gates admit to this a few months ago when pressed on his long term extreme measures anti-AGW advocacy), and most of the arid ones that are at potential risk will be in "significant risk" range in about 300 years or so.
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If electricity suddenly becomes more scarce and expensive I would say we are doing it wrong, as that is counter to normal human progress. Which brings us back to "impoverishment". We want to make the world's poor people more like us, we do not want to be more like them. Consider the people working towards the latter as not your friends.
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Renewables have already been proven to be economically superior to fossil fuels in every way.
Prior to delving into the economic aspect, could you direct me to a nation that has effectively employed solar and wind power as the primary components of a decarbonized electricity grid ( 50g CO2eq/kWh over a yearly average for instance)? Disregard the economic considerations for now, give me any example, even if it happens to be a significantly costly one. Hello? No response? Damn, must be frustrating for you to realize that physical laws don't magically bend to your will.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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How embarrassing for you that you can't understand a simple question: " direct me to a nation that has effectively employed solar and wind power as the primary components of a decarbonized electricity grid"
I even gave you the lax definition of a decarbonized grid: less than 50g CO2eq/kWh over a yearly average.
Examining examples on the Wikipedia page about renewables reveals that, among all renewables, hydro stands out as most effective. Wind and solar consistently require backup from gas, coal, or hydro. Ho
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They require storage. Backup power sources are optional, especially if wind and solar are teamed.
Nuclear isn't renewable.
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Hydro is not applicable at scale as it heavily depends on local geological features (and population density). My objection is about the stuff that gets all the attention when talking about what can be deployed in emerging countries, or countries without moutains: solar and wind.
Nuclear isn't renewable.
And nobody said it was. But it has benefits similar to hydro when talking about low-CO2 emissions power sources: you can use the electricity when you want, not just on a sunny day or when the wind is blowing.
Because it is not renewab
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There are already numerous multi-gigawatt solar parks in developing countries, and wind farms have gotten even bigger. The most powerful of these plants already generates almost a quarter of the output of the most powerful electrical plant ever built, and there's no end in sight of their growth even as individual projects, let alone th
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It is certainly self-interested on several levels, not all of them necessarily bad. It's nowhere near as bad a greenwashing scam than some tree-planting scheme that is actually carbon positive, for example. People understand the UAE is in the fossil fuel business and nobody expects them to get out of it -- certainly not before the US or the EU stops producing fossil fuels.
The fact that it's a little embarasssing for them to be in the oil business is a good thing -- but it's not as if it could be *so* emba
so much money wasted (Score:5, Funny)
If Only (Score:1)
If only the UAE could be trusted in the least bit about anything.
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Peanuts... (Score:2)
But the peanuts are getting a bit larger. That is at least something.